


The Mad Hatter's Child

by fyredancer



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: AU, Crack, M/M, Mpreg, twincest not related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyredancer/pseuds/fyredancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you take a little bit of Wonderland home with you. ...Sometimes you take a <i>lot</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mad Hatter's Child

**Author's Note:**

> For kishmet, who writes me beautiful things. ♥ ...And catches me drunk in chat. >_>  
> Thank you to tokiobillhotel for the utterly perfect banner and , the best beta there is!

The lane that the young man stalked along was composed of short butter-yellow grass, fringed in frenetic color not typically found in nature. Immense flowers of seething fuchsia and emerald green fought elbow to elbow with simmering golden poppies, zebra-striped tulips, and birds of paradise blooms that craned their heads as he went. Overhead, the firmament swam with earthy colors, taupe and muddled sepia and slate layered with adobe, and illumination came from some sourceless, diffuse means, concentrated at no particular point in the overturned muddy bowl of the dome above. Tom Kaulitz moved along the lane with stiff, angry strides, swinging a stick and beheading electric-blue daises that lined the lane and screamed "murder, murder!" as he went.

"Oh, shut up!" Tom snarled at the daisies. "You're all poisonous."

The grassy lane terminated in a rickety gate, fastened securely with a gleaming lock. It was splintered and covered in peeling paint curls. Tom looked at the gate scornfully. A bluebird landed on the top rail, cocking its tiny head to fix him with a beady dark eye.

"If two angels stand before the gate to heaven and the gate to hell, and one of them tells the truth yet the other always lies, how do you get to heaven?" the bluebird piped in an insolent tone.

A golden key dangled around the bluebird's neck.

Tom glared at the bluebird. "Duck around the side door, because the bluebird is flighty and takes wing the moment you get close to it," he said. He turned on his heel and headed to one side, plowing through thick tangles of underbrush and ropes of thorned vines.

Behind him, the bluebird squawked indignation and flapped its wings, mantling in place for a moment before taking off.

Tom struggled through the underbrush, sweating and resentful. He'd thought about coming back here – how could he not? The allure of the place overcame all the hardships. Nevertheless, being forced to return on such terms was beyond ludicrous, beyond infuriating, and the revolt of humiliation churned together with the outright unnatural fact of his condition.

Tom hacked away at the dense, spongy greenery that grew thick along the peeling rails of the old fence. As he slashed and hewed at the underbrush, forging a clumsy path, the stick in his hand stripped away and became smaller and smaller. By the time he stumbled through the last tangle of ankle-grabbing thorns and close-packed hedges, the stick was whittled down to a stub. Past the thickest tendrils of clutching greenery, a small, faded gate was inset along the length of faded fence.

Tom clenched his hand around the nub of the stick he'd used to get this far. He looked this way and that, casting around for the key to this hidden gate. With a groan, he sank to his knees. He'd come this far but he was stuck. He was tired, hungry, thirsty, his goddamned back ached, and his temper was at the shortest fuse since he'd gotten his recent unwelcome tidings.

Venting a maddened sigh, Tom opened his hand to look at the remnant of the stick in his hand, intending to hurl it beyond the gate in the hopes it would clonk a certain someone on the head, or at least have the satisfaction of throwing something. Resting against his palm was a carved wooden key, instead of the wooden nub he'd been holding.

"Of course," Tom mumbled bitterly. He scrambled up off his knees and shoved the key into the faded gate's lock.

It turned under his hand.

Tom swiped dirt off his shirt and tugged his hem down, then cursed himself out for even bothering to try to make himself look presentable. What was the point?

It wasn't as though _he_ would notice whether Tom was presentable or not, anyhow...

Tom caught that thought in its tracks and strangled it.

He stepped from the tall grass that grew thickest near the dilapidated fence and left the shelter of the trees, squinting at the muddied colors overhead in consideration. If he was heading in the right direction, he thought he knew where he was; but then again, in _this_ place, it was hard to tell. Assuming that he was going the right direction in _this_ place was tantamount to failure.

The lamenting throb of a not too distant melody reached him, a cracked dirge on the incompatibility of turtles and apes, futility of knitting sweaters for giant eels, and juggling quail eggs until they were over-easy. Tom set out to find the source of that voice with renewed purpose.

Hedges and forest copse gave way to an overgrown meadow. Tom struggled up a hill, peering at plumes of white that rose up beyond his field of view, steam or smoke. As he crested the hill, a familiar view spread out before him; one seared into his consciousness by the last hectic romp through Underland. The grassy tones of the meadow were crowned with a field of pristine white, an oblong table of incredible length, long enough to host an army. Mismatched chairs and tall, gaily painted barstools clustered at place settings of gleaming, gold-edged white china and polished silverware. Only one end of the table was occupied: the far end, near a jaunty structure that appeared to be an immense four-story dollhouse with gables and bay windows and a fresh coat of fuchsia paint that contrasted with lime green roof tiles.

Tom winced at the clash of color before his eyes fell on the dashing figure presiding over the mad tea party.

Lounging in the towering red velvet-upholstered chair that appeared thronelike in comparison to the rest, a pale man with a beautiful, brooding face rested his cheek against one hand. He wore a finely-cut, somewhat ragged looking Italian suit in a vivid blue color, with a matching hat perched atop his jet-black hair. His full lips were pouting. One long, blue-clad leg was extended on the table and the heel of his black and white spat rested in the butter dish. A teacup lay in fragments on the table before him, swimming in a puddle of tea.

Tom caught his breath and began to descend the hill. Though Underland seemed brighter compared to his last visit, less oppressed and treacherous by far, this particular fixture of Tom's previous journey seemed mired in despair. He began to wonder for the first time if the feelings weren't one-sided, after all.

As Tom made his way down the grassy hill with exaggerated care, he spotted other figures seated at the doleful, now silent gathering. The singing had stopped. A mouse stood atop a stack of plates, fishing in an open bowl with a cocktail stir that resembled a sword. A squat dodo lay with its head collapsed on a linen napkin. Lastly, a hare sat bolt upright in the chair beside the blue-suited dandy, pounding its fist on the table and crying out in a hoarse voice.

"--I say, Hatter, you've got to get a grip on your bearings, a hold on your jib lashings." The hare peered blearily at the beautiful young man. "I'd say that boy has driven you _sane_."

Without blinking an eye, the dandy in blue seized up a saucer - still laden with pieces of buttered scone - and hurled it at the hare. The dish and its contents slapped the hare across the face.

The mouse lost its grip on the cocktail skewer and applauded.

Tom reached the far end of the table. "Ahem." He stood awkwardly, tugging at the hem of his shirt with nervous fingers.

At the end of the table, the dark head raised. A pair of rich caramel-color eyes fixed on Tom.

The beautiful young man in the blue suit shot to his feet, sending the butter dish flying. His porcelain-fair skin glowed with high color and a lively flash emitted from his eyes as he leapt first onto the red velvet chair, from hence onto the immaculate white of the tablecloth, and sprinted fit to send teapots and candelabra adornments flying.

In woozy wonder, Tom watched Mad Hatter Bill tear down the length of the table, blue-clad legs churning, until he went down in a scarecrow-tumble of limbs. He somersaulted over the foot of the table and landed in a heap before Tom.

"My Alice!" Bill swooned, grasping at Tom's ankles. "My Alice, you've returned to me! I hoped...no, knew you pined for me as I for you!"

Tom kicked out against the steely grip of the hatter. "I told you, I'm _not_ Alice!" he exclaimed, irritable and hurt. "My name is Tom. TOM. T-o-m. If you can't even remember that much..."

Undaunted, Bill evaded the kick nimbly and sprang to his feet, seizing Tom by the shoulders and looking into his face with shining cocoa-brown eyes. "Of course it is, but you're also _my_ Alice, don't you see?"

"I don't see--" Tom began. Before he could complete his protest, he was drawn into a dizzying kiss. For a moment he succumbed to the handsome hatter's enchantments until that clever tongue plied along his lip and lodged at his piercing, seeking entry. "N-no...no, Hatter, I...that's not why I came here!"

The gorgeous young man pulled his luscious lips from Tom's and uttered in a small, hurt voice, "Not?"

It was a shard of ice in Tom's heart to shake his head, but he managed it.

"I told you, call me Bill," the hatter insisted, and seized Tom's hands, trying to urge him toward the table. "You're in time for tea - a glorious tea, seeing as you're the guest of honor."

Tom gaped at Bill. "Tea? As if nothing's happened?"

Bill's chestnut-brown eyes were exultant. "But _you're_ here, Tom-my-Alice," he said, blurring the words so it sounded like he was calling him 'Tomi-Alice.' He beamed indulgently at Tom and tried to tug him down the sward in the direction of the table again. "And that is a great happening, indeed."

"Bill!" Tom exclaimed, and tried again, "Haven't you noticed anything...different...about me?" He gritted his teeth and stared down the madcap young man.

"Of course," Bill replied, releasing one of Tom's hands to caress his knuckles against Tom's cheek. "Your eyes are a good deal more betokening, your mouth so much more dolorous. I can fix that, my love." He tugged on Tom's hand again, attempting to lead him.

Tom dug his heels in, no matter how many swooning blue-winged butterflies swarmed through his belly at the hatter's endearment. " _Look_ at me!" he insisted.

"But I am!" Bill proclaimed cheerfully, raking Tom with a lascivious appraisal from head to toe. "Now I've looked, and my other senses desire to enjoy you."

Tom grabbed his shirt with one hand and hauled it taut against his front. "Bill, look," he repeated, looking down himself at the prominent canteloupe-sized bump rounding out the place where his formerly-flat abdomen had been.

Bill's coffee-colored eyes went shockingly wide. "This is no frabjous day," he declared, snatching Tom up in an effusive, tender hug. "It's positively pellucid!"

"You got me pregnant!" Tom screamed in the hatter's ear.

Bill pulled back and grabbed the brim of his hat as though frightened Tom's outburst would blow it clean off his head. "You're angry?" he ventured, with somehow fragile timidity.

"Of course I am!" Tom yelled, pushing his somehow gravid belly in the hatter's direction. The urine and blood tests had failed to convince him, but seeing the baby's heartbeat on ultrasound had brought two things to mind at once: this was happening, and it was the hatter's doing. "You did _this_ to me!"

"But you came to me wearing those maternity clothes," Bill said, giving Tom wide, overtly innocent, somewhat crazed eyes. "Not to mention you were so ardently responsive to my advances. What else was I supposed to do, but put a baby in you?"

Tom's mouth worked. He sputtered for a few instants, gesturing with his expressive hands, and finally let out a short scream of frustration. "These are not maternity clothes! This is how I _dress_ ; this is how I LOOK! This is my style!"

"Oh," Bill said, and lifted a hand to his face. "Oh my. Well, is that your only complaint?"

"Well, how about the fact that...this is impossible!" Tom said, gesticulating again.

Mad Hatter Bill stared at him with a vague, pleasant smile on his face, as though Tom were the idiot in their current scenario. "This is Underland, Tom. Surely you realized by the end of your stay that we specialize in possibling the impossible, here?"

Tom widened his eyes at the crazy man. "No. No way. This can't be happening," he said.

Bill grinned back at him, somewhat manic, entirely undaunted. "It's delightful. You're carrying our _child_ , Tom! This is the expression of our love, transformed and made manifest in flesh and bone!"

Tom began to sputter a protest and shut up when the hatter looked at him with enormous puppyish brown eyes.

He didn't even have to squeeze his eyes shut to recall the pretty young hatter's coaxing whisper, "open up, open for me," and the way they had rocked together sweet and slow as lazy heated kisses in the summertime until they came undone together.

He'd never done that with anyone before. If it hadn't been love, it had been a fair imitation.

Bill reached for his hand with eyes that shimmered, brimful of hope. "Then you've come to stay?"

Tom backed away, blinking in confusion. "To stay?" he echoed. "No, I can't...I can't stay." A tug went through his middle and he pressed an unsteady hand to the traitorous swell of his bump.

"But you're here," Bill said piteously. "You came here, to be with me."

"I came..." Tom snared a hand in his dreadlocks. "All I came to find out was how, why."

Bill shook his head. "Those don't matter," he said, tea-brown eyes sorrowful as congealed hopes. "But if I were to give you words, useless as they are, the answer to both could only be love."

Tom groaned. "I'm too young for a baby!" he protested. He'd barely managed to scrape together the monthly cash to make rent and the cheapest groceries imaginable. "Besides, I...don't belong here." He dipped his head, unable to look at the crushed expression of the hatter any longer.

"You belong where you wish to be," the hatter's defeated whisper replied.

When Tom looked up, the patch of meadow before him was empty. The beautiful blue-clad hatter was gone.

"You've done it now," the hare declared, thumping a paw onto the table linen and causing a row of battered cups to dance. "You've driven him sane with love."

"Crazy," Tom corrected, knowing how the phrase went.

"Not like he used to be," the hare said sadly.

"Go drown yourself in the teapot," Tom responded, sullen. He wanted to drop into one of the chairs that circled the table - the chintz one looked so comfortable, and his back was killing him - but pride stiffened his spine. He trudged past the broken-up tea party. "Which way to the White Queen?"

* * *

No two trips to the Underland ever ended the same - Tom didn't think it was possible. This time he jumped into a desert twister at the White Queen's bidding, and fell with an ungainly thud onto dust-festooned dropcloths in his grandmother's attic. As he got up, Tom realized he was cradling his belly with one protective hand.

"Well, little bean," he spoke to his stomach. "Looks as though Underland knows the way to Grandma's house." He laughed, expecting a high-pitched whipcrack of laughter to join him for an instant before realizing what he'd left behind. He had taken a piece of Underland home with him, impossibly, but not what had lured him back.

Tom closed his eyes for a moment and saw Bill's hurt gaze again. He sighed and gathered himself to get up.

It was impossible to escape his grandparents' house without coffee and cake. This Tom knew from experience, so he was braced for it when he descended the stairs. Being elderly, his grandparents already drank decaf so he didn't have to ask for it special, and neither appeared concerned that he'd come from the attic without going up there to begin with. He sat at the table and gripped his mug, staring at the pebbly-polished surface of the kitchen counter as he ate cake that might as well be sawdust.

"Not that you need it," his grandma had teased as she set the cake in front of him. "Looks like you're getting quite the beer gut."

"Girls think it's cute," Tom said mechanically. He tugged at his big shirt to make it bell around him so the bump showed less obviously.

"Got a girlfriend yet?" his grandpa wheezed.

"No, grandpa, not yet," Tom replied, pushing aside his coffee. All he saw was a pair of ganache-dark eyes.

It took two bus transfers and a long walk to get from his grandparents' place to his own apartment. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs that wound in endless mocking loops from the sidewalk to the top floor, Tom could only eye the concrete ridges with weary resignation. He clutched the railing in a death grip and took his time.

The long hallway appeared empty at first glance until Tom got closer to the door that was his, 834. Someone appeared to be waiting outside the door, a dark-haired person of indeterminate gender with a wiry-thin frame. The person was wearing ratty jeans and a robin's-egg blue tee shirt.

As Tom got closer to the door, the dark head lifted. "What took you so long?" Bill asked him, aiming wide, nut-brown eyes in his direction.

"I, I'm home," Tom stammered. He braced himself as Bill pushed off from the wall as though to hurl himself into Tom's arms.

Bill stopped short, peering into Tom's face, tilting his head one way, then the other, to gaze at him out of the corners of his faintly slanted eyes. "I thought you'd mind more."

Tom cleared his throat and looked away, embarrassed. "Well, maybe what I minded most was leaving you," he admitted.

With a joyful peal of laughter, Bill draped himself around Tom's neck and brought their bodies together. "Tom, my Alice," he said, rubbing his cheek against Tom's. "I'd have missed you so. Now there's no need for that bothersome separation."

"How are you even here?" Tom wanted to know, skimming his hands over the hatter's warm back. Shyly he nuzzled back against Bill, giving vent at last to the cresting sensations within him.

"This is where you are," the hatter said, muffled, against his neck. "Therefore this is where I wish to be."

* * *

In Overland, as Bill called it, people had two names, a first and last. Bill declared his to be "Millner," and when Tom had protested it ought to have something to do with hats, Bill had solemnly advised him to look it up. Tom had thought it would be difficult, securing things like identification and other documents for Bill, but somehow Bill moved fluidly through daily life with no questions or barriers. He brought home an income, even, and the baby had pre-natal vitamins and more than ramen and potatoes to eat, and more obstetrician visits than Tom had thought he'd be able to manage.

The baby grew large in Tom's belly and limited mobility, as well as the number of positions that were comfortable. Bill crooned his strange Underland-cracked songs to it, rubbed oil into Tom's skin to prevent dryness and inhibit stretch marks, and lavished kisses on both Tom and the swelling baby bump.

Tom tried to pretend it was a tumor, but that notion was brought to a screeching halt when the kicking started. Amazingly, the baby always quieted when Bill arranged Tom on his front with his belly supported between his knees, rump in the air.

"I've heard pregnant sex is outgrabe," Bill would whisper to him, and use a palmful of oil to push in nice and slow. When they moved together, they were the only two beings striving in the world. All else was stillness.

All in all, Tom spent more time on his knees during pregnancy than he would have thought possible. They had to shift positions, putting Tom on his side when the belly got too big to manage, but Tom had to agree that pregnant sex was a cut above gambol and far beyond gyre.

Bill was good to him in ways Tom never would have expected. He rubbed Tom's feet without complaint, worked his fingers into the mass of Tom's dreadlocks to get at his aching scalp, hummed merry tunes as he bopped around the kitchen making soothing tea or nurturing broth or his very own invention, pickle ice cream.

"We could be rich if you put this on the market," Tom mumbled as he spooned up the last of his greedily, after an early dinner of tea sandwiches and bouillabaisse. After Tom's intense craving for pickles and ice cream had become known to Bill, he'd experimented with home ice cream making until hitting upon a combination Tom pronounced to be divine.

"I am already rich," Bill said simply, bestowing a kiss to Tom's cheek. "As for money, we will always have no more than we need."

Tom nodded hazy agreement to this and curled up in the lap-blanket that Bill had crocheted for him during their second week together. He was coming to accept the way that Bill breezed through the cracks of reality, worked at the corner suit store and earned a decent monthly wage that was paid in cash, no questions asked, got by on the brilliance of his wide smile. He did all that and so many little extras for Tom that Tom had no idea how he'd have done without him, and didn't want to.

Bill took Tom to doctor appointments of increasing frequency. No one aside from the one astonished obstetrician and his nurse was privy to Tom's secret. He wore his largest shirts and had put on enough pudge in his face that he could say, quite honestly, he was carrying his weight in front as most skinny men did when they put on more than a few pounds. The first few visits had been walks of shame, going through hallways with his head down and his cheeks burning. Trips with Bill were less arduous.

Upon meeting Tom's doctor, the man had asked what Bill's involvement was, and Bill had promptly launched into a stunning rendition of 'He's Having My Baby' that Tom had begged him not to repeat, ever. Bill sat next to him in waiting rooms, thigh to thigh, and told their little bean stories in hushed tones, and whisked payment receipts out of sight before Tom could see any daunting sums.

They never talked about the baby itself, or what would come after. Bill had begun a few conversations with the words, "when the baby comes," that Tom had cut off, snicker-snack.

The weight of unsaid things grew larger than the roundness pushing out the front of Tom's shirt. Bill took care of Tom, sang and spoke softly to Tom's belly, and wound his infuriatingly inextricable way into the inner chambers of Tom's heart, heretofore as unpenetrated as his formerly-virgin arse. They didn't talk about what they were to each other, or what would happen when their little bean was no longer a 'bump.'

Tom was carrying the mad hatter's child, and couldn't let himself contemplate what came next. Part of him was convinced their baby would come out as some half-awry Underland creature despite Bill's obvious beauty and the doctor's pleased interpretations of the ultrasounds. He wouldn't let the doctor tell them what sex the baby was; he wouldn't talk about names; he tried not to touch any part of himself below the sternum, so it was helpful that Bill would.

During long nights Tom dreamed of being piled in eiderdown. When he opened his mouth, a flurry of feathers poured down his throat. He suffocated, and woke up panting. Bill sang to him then, too, lullabies from another land, half another language.

Tom wondered if Bill dreamed of Underland, but that was another thing between them that remained unsaid.

* * *

There was no question of the baby being delivered by anything but Caesarian method. Bill had some flighty romantic notions of storks and cabbage leaves, of bringing Tom to the hospital and holding his hand while the baby seeped through his pores, or something; Tom wasn't clear on the details but it had to be something as unlikely and impossible as what had caused his condition to begin with. The doctor had set Bill straight with a few handy diagrams that had sent Bill running for the bathroom.

Whether that bout of nausea had been over the prospect of blood or delivering through the butt, Tom never knew. Bill returned pale but steely-jawed and resolved to support Tom through the Caesarian.

"I won't watch while they cut you open," Bill warned him, patting Tom's hand while positioning him that night for optimum baby-silencing.

"What is your objection to a C-section?" Tom wanted to know.

Bill gave a little shudder, his teak-warm eyes swirling with revolt. "It's so unnatural. Cutting you open like a side of beef."

"The little bean isn't so little anymore," Tom replied. "It'd never make it down past my hips."

"You do have narrow hips," Bill told him, stroking down there below the bulge of positively rotund belly. "And a narrow ass." He patted there too, as though to assure it wasn't to be neglected.

Tom was delivered of his burden on the night of spring solstice, when the doctor weighed the balance of Tom's health versus the baby's, and scheduled the procedure. There was pain, a cloud of drugs more potent than the stench of opiate from a hookah blown into his face, and through it all the touch of the hatter anchoring him to a wavering track of uneasy consciousness.

"Oh, a caul," the hatter said, his tone so surprised as he squeezed Tom's numb fingers. "Tom-my-Alice, our baby has a caul."

"Whazzat?" Tom slurred, trying to wiggle his toes and giggling when he couldn't.

A shrill cry started up nearby, and Tom sighed as the hatter leaned in close to him, nuzzling his cheek.

"We did it," Bill told him.

"I think that last part was the doctor," Tom replied. A small, red, baby-shaped bundle was placed into the crook of his arm. Bill regarded him, and it, with wide watery eyes.

Tom turned his head and ignored the vague pulling sensations that were going on by his belly. At some point, the doctor had said "how remarkable," and he'd tried hard to ignore it. If there was something special or unusual about his insides, he really didn't want to know. How and why are both love, he reminded himself. He looked into the baby's face.

"Oh," a choked sort of sob left him. He reached one wondering finger out for the baby, who aimed cloudy blue eyes in his general direction and gaped in soundless contortions. "It's..." Tom, who had never cried a day in his life that he could recall, lay there with silent tears collecting in the corners of his eyes as the hatter leaned against his shoulder and breathed into his ear.

"...a boy," the doctor supplied.

"Our baby boy," Tom said. He bit his lip. The bump had been an impossibility; something to be resented and ignored. This was reality, a tiny, fragile life, and the sudden impact of it swelled his heart to proportions he'd never known.

Formless, he had hated it.

As Tom stared into the unfocused, squint-eyed face of their baby boy, all he felt was a love that suffused every previously untenanted corner of his life. He smiled foolishly down at the little face.

"Wait...wait, don't take him," Tom protested weakly, futilely, as the soft downy bundle was plucked from his arms.

"He is somewhat premature," the nurse said apologetically. "We're going to put him in the crèche for a bit, and make sure everything is all right."

Bill stroked Tom's face and whispered, "This is why midwives stay in business."

The hospital stay for both of them was short as Tom healed enough to check out in a few days' time, and the baby's health met all of the standards by which the hospital specialists declared him capable of going home. He was handed over into Bill's tender care, and Tom was wheeled to the bright yellow cab that would spirit them home. The nurse had showed the two of them how to prepare formula, which displeased Bill, but as Tom wasn't going to be nursing the options were fairly limited.

In Tom's stubborn insistence to discuss anything post-birth related, they had done very little preparation for the baby's arrival. No crib awaited at home, no small army of baby clothes for them to change him into, no packs of diapers or baby slip for the bath or monitors and certainly no toys. Tom imagined that he saw accusations in the hatter's eyes as they bedded down for a nap on their king-sized mattress with the baby cocooned in a blanket between them. Tom was pondering names, and Bill hadn't brought up any. The exertion of the short trip from hospital to home had worn him out, and he fell asleep quickly, one finger grasped in the baby's reflexively-curled tiny grip.

When he woke, that trusting little grip was gone.

Tom squirmed in his blankets. "Where is he?" he asked, rubbing at his eyes. He couldn't move around too much, for fear of pulling his stitches. It was funny – or not – how one never noticed how abdominal muscles affected everything one did until they'd been cut into and stitched back together.

The hatter lay on his side facing Tom, his expression weary and inscrutable.

Tom frowned and stirred a hand through the nest of warm blankets puddled between them. If the hatter was here, then where...? "Where's our baby?"

"Gone to Underland," Bill said, and sighed, closing his eyes.

"What!?" Tom sat up so fast, a bolt of pain ripped clear through him. "What do you mean, Underland? No, you can't!"

"He's gone to take my place," Bill continued in a soft, inexorable sort of tone. "There has to be a hatter, you see; and he's my son."

"Your son – he's _my_ son, too!" Tom yelled. "How could you do this?"

The hatter bit his lip, his mahogany-sheened eyes large and disconsolate. "But you never wanted this baby."

"I...I..." Tom stuttered, because he couldn't refute it. "But I want him _now._ He's not just...he's _real_ now, and he's so little; he needs us to care for him!"

"The White Queen--" Bill began.

"Oh, god, no, I can only imagine the nursemaids she'd farm him out to," Tom groaned, beginning to struggle with the bedclothes. He nearly fell getting out of bed and tried not to think about what the pain meant for his insides. 

There had been a terrible mistake, worse than the first.

"Tom-my-Alice, what are you striving for? I thought this was what you wanted." Bill had the gall to sound hurt as he climbed out of bed, as well, running a hand through his disheveled black crest of hair.

"You've taken everything from me! My firsts, my innocence...my baby!" Tom bit his lip and glared at the hatter through furiously welling tears. "You took my heart and now look what you've done with it."

Bill crossed the distance swiftly. "Tom-my-Alice, no, please; I never meant..."

Tom struck out at the hand Bill reached for him. "I'm not! Why can't I just be Tom? That's the whole problem...I'm always your Alice, never your Tom."

"You're _always_ my Tom," Bill corrected, reaching for him again, ducking Tom's clumsy swipe and gathering him tenderly against his front. "You're my only Tom, I promise. Tom-my-only. What can I do?"

"Help me get dressed," Tom replied. His hands curled into the hatter's shirt like the reflexive grip of the newborn that had been spirited away, bringing home the brunt of all he'd gained, all he'd been given.

All that he'd let slip through his grasp, or almost.

"But where are we going?" the hatter whispered, the rich brown of his eyes swirling with hope and apprehension.

"To Underland, of course," Tom replied staunchly. "We're going to get him back."

Bill clung to him like a ribbon to a maypole. "Tom, Tom," he cried, his voice soft but terrible, a lion's purr. The madness that had gentled to benign sweetness during his sojourn with Tom lurked ready to consume as before. "There has to be a hatter in Underland. There's no getting round the requirement. He stays above; I go below."

Tom stared into Bill's tragic eyes as he grasped it at last. "I have to choose," he said numbly. "For good."

"Or ill," the hatter whispered, his voice harsh as nails drawn over slate.

They clung together as Tom lowered his head, breathing deep. The pain inside was a brutal slap to the senses, clearing his mind of the fog that prescription drugs had wrapped around him for the past few days. "I choose you," he said at last.

Bill made a low, wounded noise. "Our baby..."

"And our baby," Tom finished with certainty. "Can I say goodbye to my grandparents, first?" They'd been good to him, raising him after he'd been orphaned and giving him what they could, despite their fixed income.

Bill gave him wide eyes. "You mean..." His voice was hushed with awe. "You'll return with me to Underland? For keeps? Tom-my-only, you said you _can't_ , and so--"

"--I belong there now," Tom interrupted. "You said it, right? I belong wherever I wish to. I wish to be with you - _and_ little Al."

Bill cocked his head to the side. "Al?" he echoed.

Tom gave him a bashful grimace. "You seemed to like calling me 'Alice' well enough, so I figured..."

"Al," Bill said again, trying it out. "Allison?"

"That's a girl's name," Tom denied.

"Who says?" Bill countered. "Oppressive years' worth of naming conventions must be beheaded, lest they get uppity." He lofted his nose in the air as though to demonstrate the attitude to be feared.

"I love you," Tom said fondly, the words slipping out unbidden.

Bill's eyes went wide. "Then...I am your Bill, as you are my Tom?"

Tom leaned against him, trusting to Bill's strength to keep him upright. "I never said?"

"I would have noticed," Bill replied, tart.

Tom stroked his hand over the back of Bill's hip. "You're my Bill, my one and only," he confirmed. "The only one I'll ever want. I'd be mad to think otherwise."

Bill nudged his nose against Tom's. "I've got enough madness for both of us," he promised.

"So...how do we get to Underland from here?" Tom wanted to know. He pictured Bill handing off their baby to some envoy come to collect, and wondered no longer at the glimmer in Bill's sad toffee-brown eyes when Tom had woken.

"But your grandparents," Bill prompted.

"I can visit them later," Tom replied. He hesitated. "Unless...it's one-way?"

Bill shook his head. "The paths are myriad."

"So I'm discovering," Tom said.

"Do you want to bring anything with?" Bill asked curiously. "I will provide; there more easily than here."

Tom grinned. "I'm sure." He looked around. "Some clothes..."

"They grow on trees," Bill said, with such solemnity that Tom had no idea whether he was joking.

"Okaaaaay..." Tom set his head against Bill's shoulder, tired out from standing only this much, and sighed. "Just my guitar, then."

Bill nodded, arranged Tom comfortably on the window seat, and went to fetch Tom's guitar case. Tom started.

"We're going now," he realized.

"I wouldn't trust a pack of cards with our son," Bill said, wrinkling his nose.

"Oh, god," Tom responded, appalled. He imagined a crowd of burly club suits manhandling their son and it made him want to cry. "Let's go!"

Guitar in one arm, Tom in the other, the hatter deftly navigated a path for them around the foot of the bed and brought them to the full-length mirror that adorned Tom's closet. Bill raised a black, white-tipped nail and tapped the mirror once, twice; cocked his head and paused before tapping it three more times. The mirror rippled like the surface of a lake in which he'd dropped a single pebble.

"Through the looking glass," Tom said, wondering. "Of course..."

"Together, now," Bill told him, angling to go sideways so he could enter the frame without letting go of Tom. "Else who knows where you'll end up, and what hardships would bar the way to our happily ever after."

Tom tried not to smile, but it was impossible with Bill looking at him like _that._ "Let's go," he said, winding their fingers firmly together.

"And!" Bill added, juggling the guitar case under his arm and holding up one slim finger like an exclamation point. "Just because you've skipped the second step so far, doesn't mean I'll let you get away with it forever."

Tom tilted his head to the side, confused.

"First comes love...and we went straight to baby carriage..." Bill informed him in a sing-song voice. "Know what comes next?"

Tom considered a groan, a whimper, a dismayed noise of some sort. He gave in with all the grace he could muster. "As you wish, but I want a June wedding."

Bill beamed at him. "I love June bugs. This will go smashingly."


End file.
